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PNS Daily Newscast - March 21, 2019

The nation’s acting Defense Secretary is under investigation for promoting Boeing, his former employer. Also on the Thursday rundown: The Trump administration’s spending blueprint being called a “bully budget.” Plus, a call for the feds to protect consumers from abusive lenders.

NH Health-Care Advocates Speak Out on Tax Plan

Melissa Hinebauch speaks in Concord on Thursday about her experiences protesting the tax-law changes making their way through Congress. (Granite State Progress)

December 8, 2017

CONCORD, N.H. – Health-care advocates who traveled from New Hampshire to Washington, D.C., to protest the passage of the Senate tax changes were in Concord on Thursday, speaking out about their experiences. They say the 500-page bill guts Medicaid and Medicare to give massive tax breaks to corporations and the rich.

According to Lisa Beaudoin, executive director of ABLE New Hampshire, the results would be particularly devastating to people with disabilities.

"This would result in the stagnation of Medicaid long-term supports and services, caps on spending; and individuals in the future would have long waits to receive adult services," she explains.

Gov. Chris Sununu has praised the tax bill as a "net positive" that closes loopholes and simplifies the tax code.

But, Melissa Hinebauch human rights co-chair of the Kent Street Coalition, points out that, while corporate tax cuts in the bill are permanent, those for individuals expire in a few years. And she predicts services will be slashed as the federal deficit explodes.

"It will hurt the people who can least afford to be hurt - like the struggling middle-class, students, the elderly, the working poor, and those who need access to affordable health care," she notes.

She says the Senate tax bill contains provisions that would strip an estimated 13 million people nationwide of their health insurance and raise premium costs for millions more.

Both Hinebauch and Beaudoin were among dozens of protesters arrested at rallies in the Senate office building in Washington as Republicans finalized the tax bill - rallies Beaudoin says drew people from across the country.

"The people who will most enormously be impacted came together to stand up to the truth of the harsh impacts this tax bill will have on our nation's most vulnerable," Beaudoin adds.

A final version of the bill has to pass in both houses of Congress. Republicans hope to have it on the president's desk before the end of the year.